Three startups from New Zealand, the US and India were chosen as winners of the 2013 StartmeupHK Venture Programme, the first global startup contest designed and staged by Invest Hong Kong (InvestHK), part of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government.

After two final rounds of judging at the Conference Hall of Central Government Offices at Tamar, D’Arcy Polychrome Ltd, Hanson Robotics and Wifinity Ltd beat nine other finalists to win the Grand Awards and receive prizes worth around HK$2 million in the form of free professional services and work space for one year provided by eight corporate sponsors.

Winners of StartmeupHK Venture Programme 2013

The StartmeupHK Venture Programme 2013 is the first by InvestHK and aims to raise awareness of Hong Kong’s potential as one of Asia’s leading hubs of entrepreneurship and innovation. The global competition launched on July 9 and 384 ventures from 39 countries and cities had applied by the close of the application period on August 27.

D’Arcy Polychrome has developed a process called Drikolor, which delivers colour through dry granulated pigments that are mixed into base paints at point of use or point of sale.

Wifinity is an IoT (Internet of Things) semiconductor company. It sells IoT devices to the enterprise markets in the US and India. Wifinity is developing a technology that reduces spectrum usage and optimizes communication technologies by leveraging the flexibility of LEDs to deliver data at super-fast rate.